It was 46 years ago when Israel turned its forces against the all-Palestinian
towns of Lydda and Ramleh.
On July 13, 1948, Israeli troops forcefully compelled the entire population of
as many as 70,000 men, women and children to flee their homes. Systematic
looting followed. Swarms of new Jewish immigrants flocked to Lydda and Ramleh,
and within days these ancient towns were transformed from Palestinian to Jewish
municipalities.

Lydda and Ramleh lay east of Jaffa, between
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and were to be part of the Palestinian state-as was
Jaffa-according to the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947. However, since
serious fighting had begun in April 1948, Israel had not only secured its own
territory designated by the U.N. as part of the Jewish state but was now
expanding its control into areas designated Palestinian. Jaffa had already been
"cleansed" of its Palestinian population and come under Israeli
control.

The initial attack against Lydda-Ramleh was led on April 11 by Lt. Col. Moshe
Dayan, who was later Israel's defense minister and foreign minister. Israeli
historians describe him as driving at the head of his armored battalion
"full speed into Lydda, shooting up the
town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population."1

Two American news correspondents witnessed what happened in the ensuing
assault. Keith Wheeler of the Chicago Sun Times wrote in an article
titled "Blitz Tactics Won Lydda" that "practically everything in
their way died. Riddled corpses lay by the roadside." Kenneth Bilby of the New
York Herald Tribune wrote that he saw "the corpses of Arab men, women
and even children strewn about in the wake of the ruthlessly brilliant
charge."2

All men of military age were sent to camps and all transport commandeered.
The residents of Lydda were promised that if they congregated in mosques and
churches they would be safe. On July 12, a brief firefight broke out in Lydda
between Israeli soldiers and a Jordanian reconnaissance team in which two
Israelis were killed. In retaliation, the Israeli commander issued orders to
shoot anyone on the streets. Israeli soldiers turned their wrath at those
cowering in mosques and churches, killing scores of them in Dahmash mosque
alone. Palestinians venturing from their homes were also shot and killed. At
least 250 Lyddans were killed and many others wounded.3

That same day, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ordered all the Palestinians
expelled. The order said: "The residents of Lydda must be expelled quickly
without attention to age." It was signed by Lieutenant Colonel Yitzhak
Rabin, operations chief of the Lydda-Ramleh attack and later Israel's military
chief of staff and its prime minister in 1974-77 and again today since 1992.4
A similar order was issued about Ramleh.

The next day the massive forced exodus of the Palestinians began. The
Ramlehans were luckier than their neighbors from Lydda. Most of the Ramleh
expellees were driven into exile in buses and trucks. The Lyddans were forced to
walk.

The exodus was an extended episode of suffering for the refugees.

The commander of Jordan's Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb Pasha, reported:
"Perhaps 30,000 people or more, almost entirely women and children,
snatched up what they could and fled from their homes across the open fields
.... It was a blazing day in July in the coastal plains-the temperature about
100 degrees in the shade. It was 10 miles across open hilly country, much of it
ploughed, part of it stony fallow covered with thorn bushes, to the nearest Arab
village of Beit Sira. Nobody will ever know how many children died."5

Israeli historian Benny Morris reported: "All the Israelis who witnessed
the events agreed that the exodus, under a hot July sun, was an extended episode
of suffering for the refugees, especially from Lydda. Some were stripped by
soldiers of their valuables as they left town or at checkpoints along the way
.... One Israeli soldier ... recorded vivid impressions of the thirst and hunger
of the refugees on the roads, and of how 'children got lost' and of how a child
fell into a well and drowned, ignored, as his fellow refugees fought each other
to draw water. Another soldier described the spoor left by the slow-shuffling
columns, 'to begin with [jettisoning] utensils and furniture and in the end,
bodies of men, women and children, scattered along the way!

"Quite a few refugees died-from exhaustion, dehydration and
disease-along the roads eastwards, from Lydda and Ramleh, before reaching
temporary rest near and in Ramallah. Nimr Khatib put the death toll among the
Lydda refugees during the trek eastward at 335; Arab Legion commander John Glubb
Pasha more carefully wrote that 'nobody will ever know how many children
died."6

More than just the murderous sun and rough terrain contributed to the
miseries of the displaced Palestinians. Israeli soldiers searched them for
valuables and indiscriminately killed those they took a dislike to or thought
were hiding possessions. The London Economist reported: "The Arab
refugees were systematically stripped of all their belongings before they were
sent on their trek to the frontier. Household belongings, stores, clothing, all
had to be left behind."7 One youthful Palestinian survivor
recalled: "Two of my friends were killed in cold blood. One was carrying a
box presumed to have money and the other a pillow which was believed to contain
valuables. A friend of mine resisted and was killed in front of me. He had 400
Palestinian pounds in his pocket." 8

The
Outbreak of Looting

After the
forced exit of the Palestinians, looting began in Lydda and Ramleh. Israeli
historian Simha Flapan reported: "With the population gone, the Israeli
soldiers proceeded to loot the two towns in an outbreak of mass pillaging that
the officers could neither prevent nor control .... Even the soldiers from the
Palmach-most of whom came from or were preparing to join kibbutzim-took part,
stealing mechanical and agricultural equipment."9 Israeli,
troops carted away 1,800 truck loads of Palestinian property, including a button
factory, a sausage factory, a soft drinks plant, a macaroni factory, a textile
mill, 7,000 retail shops, 1,000 warehouses and 500 workshops." 10

In place of the Palestinians came new Jewish immigrants and Lydda and Ramleh
quickly "became mainly Jewish towns," in the words of historian
Morris."11 Lydda is now called Lod.

The brutal expulsion of the Palestinians of Lydda and Ramleh long remained a
sensitive topic in Israel. Rabin candidly wrote about the incident in his
memoirs in the late 1970s but the passage was censored by the Israeli
government."12 In 1978, the Israeli censor canceled a TV film
based on Yzhar Smilansky's classic The Tale of Hirber Hiza, a novella he
wrote under the pen name of S.Yzhar about his experiences as a young Israeli
intelligence officer who witnessed in 1948 the expulsion of Palestinians from
their homes. Smilansky's offending lines included this one: "We came, shot,
burned. Blew up, pushed and exiled¿.Will the walls not scream in the ears of
those who will live in this village?''13

The reverberations of the brutal treatment of the residents of Lydda and
Ramleh continue to this today. One of the families forced from Lydda was that of
George Habash. He later became one of Israel's most feared foes as head of the
militant Palestinian guerrilla group Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.14 The PLFP today is among the rejectionist groups opposing
peace with Israel.

Donald Neff is author of the Warriors trilogy on U.S.-Middle East
relations and of the unpublished Middle East Handbook, a chronological data bank
of significant events affection U.s. policy and the middle East on which this
article is based. His books are available through the

MacBride, Sean, Israel in Lebanon: The Report of the International
Commission to enquire into reported violations of International Law by Israel
during its invasion of the Lebanon, London, Ithaca Press, 1983.

*Mallison, Thomas and Sally V., Armed Conflict in Lebanon: Humanitarian
Law in a Real World Setting, Washington, DC, American Educational Trust,
1985, and The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order, London,
Longman Group Ltd., 1986.

*Randal, Jonathan, Going all the Way, New York, The Viking Press,
1983.

1Resolution 515; the text is in Simpson, United Nations
Resolutions on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1982-1986, p. 220,
and Mallison, The Palestine Problem in International Law and World Order, p. 482.

2Resolution 516; the text is in Simpson, United Nations
Resolutions on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1982-1986, p. 220.

3U.S. U.N. Mission, "List of Vetoes Cast in Public Meetings
of the Security Council," 8/4/86. The 1982 vetoes, in addition to the one
on 8/6, took place on 1/20, 4/2, 4/20, 6/8, and 6/26.